Yunong-Article review Week 1

Source: British journal of educational technology Volume: 40 Issue 3 (2009) ISSN: 0007-1013

I am interested in the education of Second Life, so I searched “second life in education” on google scholar. I find an article “Second Life in higher education: Assessing the potential for and the barriers to deploying virtual worlds in learning and teaching.” I think maybe this article can help me to know more knowledge about how people teach different things through Second Life and what are the potential abilities and possible limits for educating in Second Life.
The aim of this article is to “explore Second Life’s potential and the barriers that multi-user virtual environments present to educators wanting to use immersive 3-D spaces in their teaching.”
Method
First of all, the author introduced the history of the definition of “virtual world” from different writers, academics, and industry professionals. Then the author gave his opinion on the definition “a virtual world provides an experience set within a technological environment that gives the user a strong sense of being there.” After giving the concept of “virtual world,” the articles explored the common features of different virtual world’s forms and the typology of 3-D virtual worlds. By claiming the simple backgrounds above, this article wrote that SL is the most popular educational MUVE (the multi-user virtual environments). The technical infrastructure, immersion and socialisation are the three components of SL that explored in this article in order to understand the potential and the barriers of using virtual worlds in educational settings. From exploring the affordances of SL and analysing the resources that collected from other scholars, the article concluded some benefits and barriers of studying in SL. Technically, SL can create different settings for teachers and student to learn, but with limited resources. With the introduction of audio, educators could find more teaching activities inside virtual worlds, so that avatars may learn things easier than before. However, sometimes, it is hard for educator to create more effective learning scenarios within SL. The article also provided a survey of newsgroups, blog posts and the extant literature reveals eight broad categories under which reported issues in relation to the use of SL to examine the potentials and barriers of virtual worlds from technics, identity, culture, collaboration, time, economy and so on.
Conclusion and findings
The article concluded that virtual worlds are attractive spaces for education. Educators could design their own teaching spaces by using of virtual worlds constructively in a positive way. The author assumed that people need to manage their virtual identities, improve their digital and cultural literacies and develop design skills to understand the links between immersion, empathy and learning.

Amanda Week1- Article review

Amanda Week1- Article review

Source: Croatian Journal of Education Vol.17; No.4/2015, pages: 1037-1069

The Development of a Criteria List for the Selection of 3D Virtual Worlds to Design an Educational Environment 

Nowadays, many researchers are seeking a new virtual world platform since Second Life removed its educational discount. Various virtual world platforms which help users to create 3D environments have constantly been developed and marketed. 3D virtual worlds stand out as a type of technology that allows students to build and share their own knowledge and sometimes to learn by creating their own virtual environments.

Due to the educational potentials, some researchers regard 3D virtual worlds as the learning environments of the future. This has generated academic discussion about the potential of virtual worlds as an educational medium.

Aim of study:

Considering the recent interest in the use of virtual worlds for educational purposes and the lack of appropriate academic assessment studies, it would be useful to develop a criteria list that will help teachers to select a virtual world platform that can meet educational needs and which can help them to identify deficiencies in the existing platforms.

The goal was to develop a criteria list that may help instructional designers, developers, and educators to evaluate all virtual world platforms for educational purposes.

Methods:

Generally, studies that compare two popular virtual world platforms, or compare virtual world platforms to real-world applications, are more prominent.

Criteria lists are defined as item lists which are structured intuitively according to certain categories. In this study, a criteria list was used to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of virtual world platforms and to investigate their potential for practical applications. In the development process of this list, the phases of literature review, heuristic investigation and eliciting expert opinions followed by revisions, and conducting a questionnaire were implemented.

Main findings:

Communication among users is important since they work together and exchange ideas with each other in educational activities. It is the reason behind the inclusion of the communication tools category in the criteria list. In this category, the items are written in line with these features: written communication, voice communication, synchronous interaction, asynchronous interaction, communication with other platforms, signboard-like message objects, and features of muting and blocking unwanted users.

Another main group in the criteria list is educational specifications, which contains a great diversity of educational methods and tools. Although educational activities depend on the requirement of the project, the selected platform should be flexible enough to provide required activities and more.

Amanda (Mingjing) Week1-PL

Amanda (Mingjing) Week1-PL

Derry recommended me this "Chinese island", it's great to explore the design, and there are three main buildings. The architecture is surprised me, it's really beautiful and just the right style of China. 

First I choose to enter to the building which in front of me, I'm wording what I could see, because it just looks like someone's home.

While I step into the building, I found it is a reception for Chinese language leaning course, the information is post on the front wall and right side board.

On the way out of this hall, I can see the first two beginner course which are Pinyin and Greeting. And as I click on the blue board, the details jump up.

And I go to the left side building, one the right hand part it's an exhibition of Chinese the most famous attraction which was called Terracotta Warriors. And the introduction can be seen at the beginning of the exhibition. 

On the left hand part of the same building displays Chinese characters where you could get the picture of process of Chinese Character's development.

The third building also shows some traditional Chinese music instruments. The painting on the wall describe a scene of a festival and people playing music  with all Chinese classic music instruments.

Week1 Pary -Article Review

Source: Slavic & East European Journal, Spring2010, Vol. 54 Issue 1, p96, 22p
Item: 54357031

Second Language in Second Life: Exploring Interaction, Identity and Pedagogical Practice in a Virtual Slavic East Eur J 54 no1 Spr 2010

“Second Language in Second Life”  has successfully attracted all my attention to the educational potential of Virtual World. Second Life is pointed out  as a brilliant instructional tool for recreating real life encounters in this article. As a result of effective similarity of this detailed virtual technology learners would be able to experience communication challenges in an unpredicted world.

While Web.2 technology would offer a great opportunity to second language learners to have immersive practice time and immense access to popular communities of native speakers of the language they would be interested in, this virtual experience could be occasionally unpleasant.

As another world , Second Life has its own dark places same as real world. “Griefers” (group of cyber bullies) are good example of virtual disturbance creators ( The article has not been really clear or informative about this side of the world, I however might explore and reflect on educational disturbances during my virtual journey during semester).

Aim of study:

The general purpose of this study is simply, to approach the virtual world (mainly Second Life) primarily as a medium of learning foreign languages. This article also reflects on  some conceivable obstacles faced by L2 learners during their virtual interactive experience.

This  reflective study also pursues to prove the existence of a correspondence between language learning and negotiation of meaning  in Second Life.

Methods:

There were two stages of this case study. The first one was a pilot indicative study on five participants. They were all third-year  Russian students and had never been to Russia before.

The other inspection  was done on  five intermediate- to advanced- level Russian language students. These participants had an initial orientation with researcher in the aim of developing their operating skill in Second Life (e.g.  movement skills and in-world chatting)

Data collection:

Each participant spent 30-45 session in Second Life along with researcher. The instructions of this research were open-ended, to communicate with native speakers and obtain as much information as possible about them. Each interaction was being recorded by researcher through screen capture video software (SNAPZ Pro X).

The participants would then have an interview with the researcher and were asked about their intercommunication experience.

Both groups were sent to Moscow Island (launched in September  2007) to intercommunicate with native Russian speakers  within largest Russian community in Second Life.  

Main Findings :

 One of the most interesting findings of this article is the uptake in learners (participants) vocabulary.

The participants were able to understand new  lexical items during  their communication with native speakers. As conversations were built few less familiar words were pointed out by  language learners, the native interlocutors would explain and also give reinforcement on those words in response. The L2 learners were able to use those words later in their in-word chats. 

Another interesting finding is the equal level of anxiety and tension of virtual world “avatar” and real world “face-to-face” communication. Virtual Reality would challenge and motivate learners by providing similar emotional and environmental factors. Individual interviews with participants had illustrated the emotional pressure and social anxiety of their first interactions with native speakers. This social and communicational challenge is considered a golden opportunity for learning language process as the learners would be motivated  to fill their knowledge gap to have a comfortable interaction with other native or advanced speaking avatars.

Welcome to Virtual Worlds 2017 Semester 2

Welcome to the Virtual Worlds Blog 2017 for Semester 2. 

This blog is where you will post your weekly review of an academic article on your area of interest about Second Life, High Fidelity or other online virtual world. Your review should involve a brief description of the aims of the study, its methodology and main findings. Your post title should be: Article Review + NAME + WEEK. 

You will also post a weekly photo blog of your experiences journeying and visiting sims of interest in Second Life. This should include snapshots and descriptions of the sims that you visit. Your post title should be: Video Blog + NAME + WEEK.

The article review and photo blog are components of assessment 1.